Growth, Marketing & Metrics

Monthly / Annual Recurring Revenue

Predictable subscription revenue, normalised to a month or a year. The headline number for any subscription business.

Customers leaving

The rate at which customers cancel over a period. Revenue churn weights this by how much each was paying, which matters more than the count.

Customer Acquisition Cost

The total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers it produced.

Lifetime Value

The total revenue or profit expected from a customer across the whole relationship.

The efficiency test

How much a customer is worth against what they cost to win. Around 3:1 is the commonly cited healthy benchmark for subscription businesses.

Time to recover acquisition cost

How many months of a customer's revenue it takes to earn back what you spent winning them. Directly affects how much cash growth consumes.

Net Revenue Retention

Revenue from existing customers this year against last, including upgrades, downgrades and cancellations. Above 100% means the existing base grows without any new customers.

Annual / Total Contract Value

ACV is what a contract is worth per year; TCV is its value over the full term.

The path to becoming a customer

The stages people pass through from first awareness to purchase, narrowing at each step.

How many take the next step

The percentage of people who complete a desired action, such as signing up or buying.

Marketing / Sales Qualified Lead

Stages of lead readiness: an MQL has shown interest, an SQL has been judged ready for a sales conversation. Note that SQL here has nothing to do with the database language.

Ideal Customer Profile

A clear description of the type of organisation your product serves best. Sharpens targeting and stops wasted sales effort.

Total / Serviceable Addressable Market, Serviceable Obtainable Market

Market sizing from the theoretical maximum, down to the portion you can actually reach, down to what you can realistically win.

Go-To-Market

The plan for how a product reaches customers: who it is for, the pricing, the channels and the sales motion.

Product-Led Growth

Letting the product itself drive acquisition and expansion, through free tiers and self-service, rather than leading with sales.

Free tier plus paid upgrade

A permanently free level designed to attract users who later convert to a paid plan.

Getting users to first value

The path a new user takes from signing up to getting genuine benefit. The single biggest lever on early retention.

The first real success

The moment a new user does the thing that makes the product valuable to them. Defining it precisely is half the work.

Customers who stay

How many users are still active after a given period. Usually the most honest indicator of whether a product is actually good.

Grouping by start date

Comparing groups of users who joined in the same period, so you can see whether changes are genuinely improving behaviour over time.

Net Promoter Score

A single-question survey on how likely someone is to recommend you, scored from minus 100 to plus 100. Widely used and widely criticised.

Key Performance Indicator

The small number of measures a team agrees actually indicate success.

Objectives and Key Results

A goal-setting method pairing an ambitious objective with a few measurable results that prove it was met.

Search Engine Optimisation

Improving a site so it ranks well in search results without paying for placement.

Pay Per Click / Search Engine Marketing

Paid search advertising, where you pay each time someone clicks your listing.

Call To Action

The specific thing you are asking a visitor to do, such as 'Start free trial'.

Comparing two versions

Showing two variants to different groups and measuring which performs better, rather than deciding by opinion.

Which effort produced the sale

Working out which marketing touchpoints deserve credit for a conversion. Genuinely difficult, and most models are imperfect.

Growing existing accounts

Upsell moves a customer to a higher tier; cross-sell adds a different product. Together they drive expansion revenue.

Customer Relationship Management

The system of record for customers and prospects, such as Salesforce or HubSpot.

Content Management System

Software for creating and editing website content without needing a developer, such as WordPress.

Unique Selling Proposition / Unique Value Proposition

A clear statement of the distinctive value that makes a product or service meaningfully preferable to its alternatives.

Daily / Weekly / Monthly Active Users

Counts of distinct users who meet a defined active-use threshold in a day, week or month, used to measure product engagement.

Average Revenue Per User / Account

Average revenue generated per user or customer account during a period, useful for tracking monetisation and customer mix.

Primary product value metric

A single leading measure that best represents the value customers receive from a product and helps teams align their priorities.

Per-customer business economics

The revenue, direct cost and contribution generated by one customer or unit, used to judge whether growth is financially sustainable.